Maybe this is a bit of a digression but it seems to me that it’s an opportunity cost - the judge, prosecutor, potential public defender and so forth all need to spend time and money handling that case, which comes at the expense of some other matter. One accidental firearm injury case might take away resources from that burglary case.
There’s a finite amount of those resources available and we as a society have to decide what to spend them on.
But while it is a right, you believe people should be punished for it?
I think its perfectly within the rights of the law to restrict gun ownership. You and I will never agree. To me the 2nd Amendment allows for magazine restrictions, carry restrictions, gun buying limits, background checks, licenses, registration, etc. Violate any of those and yes, its perfectly fine to punish people
Replace “guns” with “lighter fluid and matches” … same result … would this not be the same crime? Oregon requires gun safe use in homes with children. It’s never enforced but the parents will be in court the next three years trying to get their kids back from Child Welfare.
What I thought. :rolleyes:
Don’t press charges against a few pot smokers and you’ll be way ahead.
Seriously, if this kind of case happens often enough to affect prosecutor case loads, we’ve got way too many guns and way too many stupid gun owners.
All it takes is one particularly nasty case in a small county to completely wreck the budget. A single case involving a death or serious injury takes a lot more time and resources than one or a few or even a whole bunch of simple possession cases.
And yes, there are a lot of stupid gun owners. Consider the 2012 case of Hannah Kelley, a Florida woman shot in the head at church; somebody was showing somebody else a gun for sale and it “went off.” As near as I have been able to determine, no charges were ever brought.
How about mandatory amputation of the killer’s trigger finger?